Confrontations and donations: encounters between homeless pet owners and the public

This study examines the interactions between homeless pet owners and the domiciled public with a focus on how the activities of pet ownership help construct positive personal identities. Homeless people are often criticized for having pets. They counter these attacks using open and contained responses to stigmatization. More often, they redefine pet ownership to incorporate how they provide for their animals, challenging definitions that require a physical home. Homeless pet owners thus create a positive moral identity by emphasizing that they feed their animals first and give them freedom that the pets of the domiciled lack. Through what we call “enabled resistance,” donations of pet food from the supportive public provide the resources to minimize the impact of stigmatization.     

Pet grief: when is non‐human life grievable?

This study explores how pet owners grieve their pets and view their pets' transience. Drawing on Butler's notion of the differential allocation of grievability, I have analysed interviews with eighteen pet owners. Butler argues that grievability is made possible by a normative framework which allows for some human or human‐like lives to be grieved, while other lives are rendered ‘lose‐able’. All the interviewed pet owners say that they are capable of grieving a non‐human animal, but analysis suggests that they make their pets grievable and ungrievable by turns. I argue that by maintaining this ambivalence, the interviewees negotiate pets' inclusion in a human moral community while simultaneously defending human exceptionalism. The article concludes with a discussion of pet grief as a potentially destabilizing emotion. I suggest that grieving beings on the border between grievable human and lose‐able animal – ‘werewolves’ according to Giorgio Agamben – may be a powerful way of challenging normative frameworks which arbitrarily render some human and non‐human lives lose‐able.     

Pets and Family Relationships Among Nursing Home Residents

An anthropological study of pet visiting programs to three nursing homes reveals five aspects of how elderly residents deal with their past and present ties to their families. (1) Sessions trigger childhood memories and family reminiscences associated with animals. (2) Pet loss and human loss are spoken about as interrelated experiences. (3) Animal visits highlight and help counteract the decline of domesticity that people go through in institutions. (4) Residents explore their ties to pets they have had to give up and their relationships with family members currently caring for these animals. (5) The occasional visits of people's kin during pet sessions indicates the role of animals in domestic interaction and the reaction of family members to the situation of their institutionalized relatives. These findings are compared with other studies on the ties between pets and the elderly.     

Understanding Relations between People and their Pets

As evidenced by the popularity of animal behavior shows and books, online viral pet videos, and the presence of dogs or cats in two‐thirds of American homes, pets clearly play an important role in many Americans’ lives. At the same time, however, millions of pets are abandoned, abused, and euthanized every year. What should we make of these seemingly conflicting realities? How do Americans really feel about and treat their pets? And what explains the differences? In recent years social scientists have begun to investigate the various and changing interactions between humans and animals. In particular, a growing body of research examines humans’ relationships with pets, most often dogs and cats. This paper reviews recent research in this field. After discussing what differentiates pets from other animals, the paper begins with a review of research investigating the meanings and roles of pets in people’s lives and the nature and benefits of human‐pet attachments. Secondly, it reviews research on the factors that help explain why some people have a higher regard for pets than others. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the limitations of existing research and some suggestions on how to expand future investigations.     

The Ukrainian refugee crisis: Unpacking the politics of pet exceptionalism

The rescue of pets soon became part of the humanitarian narrative of the attack on Ukraine. The open-door policy on companion animals from Ukraine—a high-risk country for rabies—in terms of regulatory modifications and the provision of services could be described as one of ‘pet exceptionalism’. While the influx of pets and the response to it has significance for the international refugee regime, there has been scant scholarly engagement with the movement of pets across borders during emergencies. To bridge academic knowledge gaps and suggest policy lessons, the article discusses how the management of the Ukraine pet influx fits with existing regulatory regimes and policy priorities governing companion animals, and the tensions involved. Drawing on a 6-month desk study (March–August 2022)—the article considers the events, interactions and policy choices which shape how companion animals are received. Using the UK and Norway as examples, it suggests that the aim of the resources and procedures directed at caring for pets and helping owners is pragmatic—to safeguard biosecurity and enforce regulations while also protecting animal health and psychosocial well-being. The term ‘pet civic consciousness’ is used to consider the notion of pets as family members, and how trust in government and understandings of biosecurity and regulatory requirements are filtered through cultural and linguistic lenses. The article identifies biosecurity, juridification, resource allocation and ethical issues of fairness across refugee populations and the intrinsic value of companion animals as central topics for future discussion.     

“My nest is full:” Intergenerational relationships at midlife

Incorporating a life course perspective, this qualitative study used focus groups to explore the experiences of midlife adults who were simultaneously providing support to emerging adult children and aging parents. Results indicated that adults situated in middle generations held beliefs that endorsed family-based responsibility to both younger and older members. Parents gladly supported children despite their longer transition to adulthood. Often unanticipated but accepted, provisions of care to aging parents were experienced with ambivalence — a joy and a burden. The transition of their parents to greater dependence helped participants gain insights into the terrain of late life and encouraged reflections about the intersection of aging, independence, and family responsibility. Participants expressed intentions to preserve their own independence and spare their children of caregiving burdens through self-directed actions. Implications focused on negotiations of family relationships around issues of independence and family responsibilities as a way to reduce intergenerational ambivalence.     

Behind the Myth of the Matriarch and the Flagbearer: How Korean and Chinese American Sons and Daughters Negotiate Gender,Family, and Emotions

While more studies are exploring the ways in which gender structures the family experiences of American‐born children of immigrants, there is less attention to how gender shapes later views on ethnicity and culture. Based on interviews with Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese Americans in the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area, this article examines the different ways second‐generation children learn, interpret, and pass on the cultural values and family traditions in their adulthood. Because their family roles center on their roles as leaders and carriers of the family name through male heirs, sons—especially oldest sons—can fulfill their filial obligations through relatively orthodox and nonengaging cultural practices that although restrictive, do not threaten their personal goals and privileged status. However, daughters must negotiate more emotionally burdensome expectations and responsibilities by preserving family honor, acting as family caretakers, and juggling multiple responsibilities; thus, they tend to re‐create more subtle, self‐empowering, and emotionally engaging ways of interpreting and preserving their parents’ expectations on family culture. I argue that the gendered ways daughters and sons are taught to practice cultural values and protect family honor has significant bearing on their later views on ethnicity and culture but in complex ways that transcend the generational divide.     

Examining the nexus between domestic violence and animal abuse in a national sample of service providers

Companion animals play a complex role in families impacted by violence. An outlet of emotional support for victims, the family pet often becomes a target for physical abuse. Results from a comprehensive e-survey of domestic violence shelters nationwide (N = 767) highlight both improvements and existing gaps in service provision for domestic violence victims and their pets. Quantitative and qualitative data noted frequently encountered obstacles to successful shelter seeking by abuse victims with companion animals including a lack of availability, funding, space, and reliable programming. Although results indicate an overall improvement in organizational awareness, fewer than half of surveyed shelters include intake questions about animals. Continued awareness and an expansion of services is needed to create viable safety planning strategies and reliable alternatives for women with companion animals in order to improve the likelihood that abuse victims will seek escape and refuge for themselves, their children, and their pets.     

The Adolescent Sexual Development of African American Gay Men with AIDS: Implications for Community-Based Practice

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study describes the adolescent sexual development of ten African American gay men living with AIDS. The informants retrospectively describe the challenges of being a gay adolescent in a mostly heterosexist and homophobic environment. They report unsupportive homophobic and heterosexist family members, community members and school officials. They also describe their burgeoning sexual orientation, sexual initiation as well as consensual and non-consensual sexual experiences with their peers. Additionally, several informants describe seeking sexual experiences with adult men. Later they suggest the adult men became their primary sources of emotional and psychological support. Implications for community practice, intervention and research with both African American gay adolescents and adult men living with AIDS are discussed.     

Embodied Fluidity and the Commitment to Movement: Constructing the Moral Self through Arthritis Narratives

While biomedical research reifies bodily movement in the lives of people with chronic illness as “functional mobility,” our analysis of biographical osteoarthritis narratives uncovers a moral commitment to movement as both a moral imperative and a technique to preserve a self threatened by the limits arthritis places on daily life. A content analysis of twelve interviews with arthritis sufferers shows that, in addition to the practical and emotional challenges of living with arthritis, these actors face the daily challenge of displaying their understanding of embodied fluidity—the timely and fluid movement through time and space—as a virtuous practice. Our informants use the movement mandate—the commitment to move despite the pain it may cause—to produce themselves as competent social and moral actors sacrificing the demands of their bodies to meet social expectations, and they conduct this performance in front of several audiences: the self and specific and generalized others. For these informants, in both private and public realms, the experience and the management of pain and physical limitation are profoundly social and accountable matters, as they affect interactions with others, their own social identities and moral integrity, and their relations with self as they seek to balance their arthritis pain with their past, present, and future self‐concepts.     

“He's Doing Fine”: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management Among Families of Seriously Ill Children

In this study, I examine how people in emotionally fraught circumstances strategically structure social interactions in order to protect fragile emotional states. Data come from interviews and observations with 18 families of children being treated for life‐threatening conditions at an elite university research hospital. I show how families worked to ward off emotional threats to their ability to maintain hope that their children would recover by preempting and restructuring social interactions with friends and family members and pruning social networks. These efforts allowed families to minimize reciprocal obligations and avoid encountering pessimistic reflected appraisals that might trigger “emotional shortcuts” leading to states of fear and anxiety. Similar efforts to reconstruct social interactions and social networks may be common among those working to maintain fragile emotional states in a variety of challenging circumstances.     

The Role of Companion Animals Throughout the Family Life Cycle

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the roles that companion animals play in the lives of American families, and discusses how those roles change as families progress through the stages of the family life cycle. It highlights the importance of pets in the lives of children and the benefits they receive from such relationships. It also presents information regarding the role of a child that animals often assume within families that do not have children. This paper also discusses the impact that the death of a pet has on the family, and provides suggestions for social workers who assist families that have strong attachment to companion animals.     

Health Benefits of Pets for Families

During the last decade, the common belief that pets are good for their owners has gained concrete scientific support. In this paper we review the evidence for the health benefits of pets, discuss the importance of pets in the family system, and explore the implications of this information for therapists. Pets play a variety of health promoting roles which are particularly important for individuals lacking support from family members or close friends. We present research evidence supporting the health benefits of pets ranging from the facilitation of social interaction while walking dogs to the physiological effects of the presence of animals on cardiovascular responses to mild stressors.     

Time,Gender, and the Negotiation of Family Schedules

I examine the interactive processes by which women and men negotiate family time schedules. Based on fifty interviews with seventeen dual‐earner couples, I focus on the ways men and women define time in gendered ways, exert different controls over the way time is used, and align their time strategies in the course of managing everyday family life. The results indicate that there are both continuities and discontinuities with the past: women continue to exert more control over the organization of time in families, but time negotiation itself has become a more complex and demanding activity. The way that couples carry out these negotiations reflects a variety of adaptive strategies, with some couples being very reactive in contending with present demands and others being highly structured and seeking to anticipate and control the future. Although some couples worked to negotiate balance in their time responsibilities, it was wives who maintained control over time and, ultimately, the orchestration of family activity.     

Immigration and Generational Solidarity: Elderly Soviet Immigrants and Their Adult Children in Israel

Immigration in later life is an extremely stressful life event. When multigenerational families resettle together, elders turn to their adult children for support, while both generations face challenges of integration. Drawing on the framework of intergenerational solidarity-conflict-ambivalence, this qualitative study explores the relationships between elderly, ex-Soviet immigrants and their adult children in Israel. The findings illuminate the declining personal resources and family status of the elders, as well as their main coping strategies. Both generations try to discover a new balance among the old and new cultural expectations, reciprocity, and use of available, formal, geriatric services.     

Ambivalence in Later‐Life Family Networks: Beyond Intergenerational Dyads

In later life, changing conditions related to health, partnership, and economic status may trigger not only support but also conflict and ambivalence, with the consequent renegotiation of family ties. The aim of this study is to investigate both conflict and emotional support in the family networks of older adults, taking the research beyond the level of intergenerational dyads. We used a subsample of 563 elders (aged 65 years and older) from the Swiss Vivre/Leben/Vivere survey. Multiple correspondence analysis and in‐depth case studies were used to identify the key social conditions that relate to the prevalence of conflicted and supportive dyads in family networks. Findings showed that the balance of conflict and emotional support in older adults' family networks varied according to the composition of their family network as well as their age, health, income, and gender.     

Living Arrangements and Informal Social Support Among the Elderly

One of the most pervasive patterns in living arrangements observed among today's elderly has been the increasing propensity to live alone. This paper assesses the extent to which living along, living with a spouse, or living with others (no spouse present) affects several dimensions of informal social support. The data for this study are from a 1983 survey focusing on living arrangement choices among elderly persons living in London, Ontario, Canada. Overall, living arrangement is considerably more important as a determinant of instrumental support than social contact. Elders choosing to live alone appear to sacrifice some degree of mutual exchange for privacy and independence. They also tend to rely on friendship to a greater extent than marred elderly or those who co-reside with others. Implications for support services and changes in the family are discussed in the context of living arrangement selection in later life.     

Married to the Military: Filipinas Negotiating Transnational Families

Women migrating transnationally as "entertainers" within Asia are particularly exposed to the possibility of forming relationships in these transnational sites. This is because the nature of their work, which entails chatting and dancing with customers and various forms of sexual labour, including fondling, kissing and sometimes sex, often leads to romantic liaisons with customers in the clubs where they are deployed. This possibility is even more pronounced for women who are trafficked (that is, deceptively recruited and employed) as entertainers, as they often counter the severe vulnerabilities associated with their positions by relying on customers-cum-boyfriends for support and assistance. Marriage is one common result of these liaisons. This paper considers the multiple impacts of such marriages for foreign female entertainers on family. I focus particularly on the ways such marriages can both constrain existing family responsibilities and facilitate new ones. The paper draws on the case of Filipinas married to American soldiers in Korea as a case study for discussion. I suggest that migrant women who become involved in such marriages are often pulled between the potentially conflicting demands of old (within their home countries) and new (with their American soldier husbands) family ties and responsibilities. I also suggest that these women's new families, whilst outwardly displaying elements of traditional gendered household roles and structures, are often characterised by long absences of the husband (to other countries or within the country of residence) and long-term patterns of transnational migration that can have a highly disruptive impact on family arrangements.